WEM Fundamentals:

Best Practices for Social Engagement

WEM Fundamentals
There is no shortage of means for engaging in the social media landscape, and engage
we must, goes the current industry imperative. But best practices are in short supply.
Here are some guiding thoughts as we pick our way through the social engagement 
woods.
 We're Engaged! Our Intimate Relationship with the Web
 The word “engagement” implies a connection between two parties. It's personal,
it's distinctive — it's everything the Web is becoming in the wake of the social
computing boom. These days not being tuned into your audience is a
communications and relationship disaster.
 "…consumers that actively engage in the use of social media tend to feel more in
control of relationships and more positive about their connection with
organizations in general," explained Michael Hulme, Professor, Institute of
Advanced Study, Lancaster University, in a recent article.
 More importantly, organizations are slowly but surely discovering that forming
and cultivating online relationships is the key to consumers' hearts. That is,
establishing and continuously nursing these connections is crucial for business
success.
 "By providing an online community in which you can engage your audience in
conversations with other like-minded people, you strengthen their bond with your
brand," offered Anna Van Sligtenhorst, Telligent's director of product
management.
 Finding Your Audience
 It's impossible to count the number of social engagement tools out there — there
are just too many. They serve difference purposes, perform different tasks,
integrate in different ways, etc. And while options are great, having so many
means you really need to dig deep into your needs before you start shopping.
 Daniel Kraus of Leading Results gave a talk a couple of months ago at SugarCon
2010. He discussed the importance of differentiating between your target
customer and your ideal customer. We all know what a target customer is — it's a
group of customers that you intend to reach with your business. Unfortunately,
limiting yourself to just one group can be a disservice.
 "An ideal customer is someone that is profitable, values what you do, refers you,
etc," Kraus said. "Contact 8 to 10 of them and ask why they chose you. What did
you do that they valued most? What is unique about your company? If you have
defined your ideal customer, then you know where to engage them on the social
Web.”
a. In the same vein, Sitecore's Lars Birkholm Petersen recently pointed out that
sometimes it's a good idea to start your engagement process by talking to
yourself, not your customers. That is, before you start thinking about how you're
going to engage your audience, know exactly what you want to get out your new
relationships and what your organization's related policies and practices are. This
will provide critical focus and structure for your limited resources.
b. Habits You Can Bank On
c. Once you've identified where your audiences are it's time to engage with them,
which brings us to obstacle number two: finding a balance.
d. In the business world, one of the main challenges with combining social software
and content management is maintaining a level of control that is appropriate for
an enterprise and specific to business needs. To ensure that you don't fall victim
to bad practices, keep the following in mind:
e. Strategies: Define Your Goals
f. "To be relevant need know what you are talking about, to understand your
content," said Ian Truscott in his Persuasive Content blog. "You need to have a
point, an objective, what are you driving at?”
a. Blogs are great, but not everyone needs one. Social CRM platforms, podcasts,
commenting systems and internal instant messaging systems are also great, but
again, not everyone needs them. Once you define what exactly it is you want,
what kind of monitoring and engagement your organization needs, then you can
dig for tools that offer the appropriate support and accessibility for Web
managers.
b. Perspectives: Think Both Externally and Internally
c. External social services is the expected topic. They allow an organization to
interact with the wider public as well as potential customers. On the flip side, it's
just as important to boost communication with your internal teams.
d. Internal socializing enhances traditional communication systems like e-mail,
improving the way organizations collaborate and transfer knowledge between
experts and new hires, for example. When approaching social engagement work
and think on both sides of the firewall. Lessons learned on one side very likely
apply in some form on the other side.
e. Tools: Integration and Simplicity are Essential
a. The tools and processes you choose for managing your social media and user-
generated content should, if possible, be the same as those used for managing
internally-generated content. Keeping things tightly integrated provides
familiarity and convenience, which in turn drives efficiencies for Web teams, as
well as increasing the likelihood of consistent messaging and behavior.
b. Evolution: Experimentation is Important
c. Though it would be nice, there's no science to social engagement. In the end,
what it comes down to is experimentation. While grabbing up social technologies
haphazardly is a very, very bad idea, picking out solutions you think might work
and trying them on — one at a time — isn't.
d. BT's intranet manager, Mark Morrell, shared some of his strategies for choosing
the right technologies at the
Connected Meetings Advanced Intranet & Portals event. These included:
e. Start small
f. Start cheap
g. Build for tear down
a. As we mentioned earlier this week, open source software often (not always) fits
into this category. It's cheap — if not free — and running quick trials is no
problem. If it doesn't work out, at least you don't have to worry about contracts or
budget approvals. On the other hand, if your experiments go well you can build
on the platform, or move on to tools that fit your needs even better.
b. Practices: Document Policies, Lessons Successes and Failures
c. As your internal team engages socially, cultivating relationships with your
customers, it's important to make sure everyone is on the same page. Building up
a knowledge base, capturing policies and lessons learned can quickly spread best
practices throughout your company.
d. Good old fashioned organization and communication is just as important when
working with fancy new communication styles and tools.
e. Bad Habits to Avoid
f. Interestingly, though these social technologies are at the forefront for a lot of us,
experts such as Dion Hinchcliffe of ZDNet still believe it may be years before
organizations are ready to adopt them.
a. "The reality is that broader social and cloud computing trends continue to evolve
faster than most enterprises are able to absorb," he said.
b. Yogesh Gupta, President and CEO, FatWire, pointed his finger at our rose-
colored glasses.
c. “The biggest mistake organizations can make is using these tools for the
technology’s sake. For example, saying 'I think we should have blogs and user-
generated video uploads on our site.’ isn't the right start for the planning process.
It should instead be, ‘We need to drive greater customer loyalty while reducing
our call center costs — how can we use social tools to enable more productive,
informative and cheaper interactions between our customers and the
organization?’
d. In short: Yes, we need to find a way to let these new tools live in harmony with
the business of business. No, that doesn't mean everyone will benefit from using
the same solutions. Again, it's about determining goals and practices first, and
then going out to find the tools that fit your needs.